The Seattle City Council, urged on by District 3 representative Kshama Sawant’s office, passed a resolution Monday pledging support for a Central District affordable housing project that is hoped to right a wrong in the city’s past actions against Black property owners in the neighborhood.
Monday, the council voted 8-0 in favor of the resolution calling for support for funding for the New Hope Community Development Institute, the group working to develop new housing near 21st and Fir’s New Hope Missionary Baptist Church.
Rev. Dr. Robert Jeffrey Sr.’s op-ed in the Seattle Times documents the city’s “urban renewal project” and redlining in the 1960s that ripped away property from the church:
Just over five decades ago, under threat of eminent domain and condemnation, the city of Seattle forcibly took ownership of our church’s two properties on the northeast corner of 21st Avenue and Fir Street to be used for the Spruce Street Mini Park. Those two parcels, for which the city paid $34,000, are now valued at more than $2 million. This is land that the church had acquired and planned for church parking and educational programming to serve the community. Furthermore, the city took the remaining parcels on the block, including several single-family homes owned by Black families for the same park project. These families were paid approximately $11,000 to $15,000 per house, forced from their homes and were deprived of benefiting from the long-term appreciation of their assets.
In a message to supporters before the vote, Sawant said “addressing past injustices means funding affordable housing today by using the Amazon Tax our movement won last year, and also increasing the Amazon Tax.”
“It means giving preference to Central Area residents who have been displaced or are under threat of displacement from skyrocketing rents at the hands of corporate landlords and developers, such as Black working and low-income people,” the councilmember said.
The resolution approved Monday “condemns the displacement caused by the Yesler-Atlantic Neighborhood Improvement project, apologizes for the harm done, and urges City Departments to find opportunities to make reparations for that displacement,” the council’s summary of the vote reads. “This resolution also urges the Office of Housing to select for funding the New Hope Family Housing project, which is a proposed affordable housing project focused on combatting the displacement of Black community members from the Central District.”
For now, the approved resolution shows support for the effort but future legislation will be required to put actual dollars to the cause.
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The claim (and obvious editorializing here) that the church’s property was “ripped away” is proven false when one looks at the archive of historical documents, which show that the church was paid *more* than fair market value for the vacant lot AND the City additionally paid for drainage improvements to church property distinct from the park property, in the City’s effort to create a public amenity that benefited only the church itself and its surrounding neighbors. http://archives.seattle.gov/digital-collections/media/collectiveaccess/images/1/9/5/6/87078_ca_object_representations_media_195687_original.pdf
Thank you for researching this. Given that almost every claim made by the activist community to get taxpayer funds has been proven false every claim needs to be verified before any compensation changes hands. This should be the norm even if grifting wasn’t a widespread problem.
To be clear, the documents posted seem to indicate that the City paid the church more than fair market value for the vacant land with the reasoning that it was appropriate to pay the church enough so that it could buy another lot nearby that was equivalent. And, the church did buy another lot nearby. Looks like the church had as much land after the transaction as before. But that doesn’t mean many of the other points made in support of the church are invalid.
I cringed like when Emperor Palpatine opens his mouth when Sawant said, “our movement…” Not “us,” or “our city,” it’s her “movement” that matters.
Thank Sawant for this! Great news!!!